1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a digital rights management (DRM) system and more particularly, to a message, method and system for processing rights objects (RO) in the DRM system.
2. Description of the Related Art
With increased Internet businesses related to online communities and electronic commercial transactions, most online contents providers provide various contents to generate draw users' interest. Such contents are mostly related to multimedia such as music, images, and video. Various types of multimedia data are provided including Internet broadcast, education, news, sports, and travel information consulting. These multimedia data create new services in virtual space.
Compared to existing analog contents, the digital multimedia contents have many advantages with respect to generation, processing, circulation and distribution. On the other hand, because a copy version of the original can easily be made, protecting the rights to digitally created products presents a problem.
The DRM system, which is a mechanism for protecting and systematically managing rights for digital assets, not only prevents piracy of contents, but also provides a protection and management system for generating, publishing, distributing and using contents. In the DRM system, digital contents exist in a coded state so that only an authenticated user may decode the contents for use and, even if contents are copied by a user, the user cannot use the contents unless the user is authenticated, thereby preventing illegal piracy.
The DRM system must continuously protect digital contents and apply various usage regulations related to the digital contents. Even if contents are based on the DRM technique, the contents must be able to accept the existing method of distributing and using digital information and a technical protection measure of the DRM should not cause inconvenience for users.
However, the conventional DRM system has drawbacks. For example, when an authenticated user desires to submit rights, via a rights object, that remain after using these rights related to issued digital contents or submit unused rights, via right objects, to a different user or the authenticated user desires to return the issued digital contents and obtain a refund of the cost or obtain a different RO, the user's request is not supported.
Therefore, there is a need for a system for facilitating the return of unused or partially used rights or the submission of unused rights or partially used rights to another user. The present invention addresses these and other needs.